• About
• Technical
  • Architectures
  • Control & Monitoring
  • Decision Support
  • TLSM
  • Cross Cutting Themes
  • Demonstrations
• People & Partners
  • People
  • Partners
• Events
  • NECTISE Conference 2007
  • NECTISE Conference 2008
  • Workshops
• Publications
• Links
• Contact

NEC-Readiness Themes

• Agility

• Interoperability

• Dependability

• Affordability

• Availability

• Human Factors

• Knowledge Management

 

The figure above presents a set of NEC-readiness themes derived by the NECTISE  project; the interrelationships of these themes, appropriately measured, determine the readiness of systems for participation in NEC.  As the main objective of NEC, Agility is at the heart of these themes.  Agility is achieved and balanced by interoperability, availability, affordability, and dependability.   All these are supported by collaboration and knowledge management. 
These themes, and the relationships between them, have provided an effective set of cross-cutting themes through which integrating threads of research have been expressed.  The themes have an intrinsic usefulness in their own right as a means of relating the research to business needs.  The research that supports these themes is summarised below.

Agility has arisen as a significant theme in stakeholder interviews; it is needed in the operational and organisational domains.  The main outputs associated with this are the REA2CT framework for managing systems projects in an agile fashion, a set of outputs associated with effective use of evolutionary architectures[1] and the agile development methodology[2], the Integrated IDSE, and the integrated control and monitoring outputs associated with health monitoring, reconfiguration and prognostics.  The driving force for agility is human decision-making and this will feature in further development of the theme, drawing on extensions to MODAF.

Agility is required in both the organisational and operational domains

Interoperability is fundamental to NEC and must be considered as a spectrum that encompasses technical to organisational interoperability[3].  The approaches to achieving interoperable systems, both in the operational environment and in the acquisition and support enterprise, have been the subject of detailed investigation in NECTISE; so far this work has assimilated the diversity of approaches from different domains and related them to the other themes; it is now sufficiently mature to be developed further within specific projects.  NECTISE has demonstrated Interoperable systems services with a surveillance scenario, requiring dependable dynamic integration, coping with failures and ongoing evolution of system implementations.

Back to top

Dependability work has focused primarily on the problems associated with safety qualification for SoS.  An important analysis[4] of current applicable safety standards in land[5], sea[6], and air[7] concluded that they are inadequate with respect to networked assets.  The analysis set the foundation for NECTISE work and has also been used in a number of fora including a specific invitation to NECTISE to provide the starting point for a multi-organisation workshop on SoS safety at the ITA conference and led by DAES. A simulation based hazard analysis approach that works from the MODAF products to establish credible interaction hazards between platforms in an NEC SoS has been created and is sufficiently mature for deployment and evaluation on practice-based projects.  The architecture evaluation framework[8] that supports evaluation of capability effectiveness also contributes to dependability.  This provides evaluation of systems options from design through to supporting assurance of capability at runtime[9].

The main activity on Affordability has been concerned with cost modelling and prediction, although the concept of affordability is rooted in a number of the proposed systems engineering approaches for NEC.  The work on Whole Life Costing for capability has resulted in a novel approach[10] to costing in the NEC domain by providing time bounded cost functions that enable cost accumulations of individual and networks of services, based on the proposed SOA approach.  In the case of capability this was demonstrated to provide the ability to characterise the impact of capability cost drivers across the domain.  The flexibility of this approach also allows simulation of the influence of lifecycle considerations on whole life capability costing.

The contributions to Availability have, so far, been in the operational applications.  Work on reconfiguration of autonomous systems[11] has provided strategies for maintaining quality of service as changes influence the available assets.  A suite of state-of-the-art programmes has been developed in the CM group for path planning, task assignment and the reconfiguration of assets and missions in real time in the presence of uncertainty.  Development of tools, by the Architectures group, for live assessment of capability effectiveness, system performance, and levels of risk[12] provide a viable strategy for service discovery as a means of managing availability.

Back to top

Human factors.  In both the operational and organisational environments trust is a significant factor and collaborative behaviours, in particular, play an important role.  Implications of complexity in the capability supply and support chain have been explored; particularly the implications of confidentiality and security on speed of information and knowledge transfer.  Amelioration of the effects of complexity through trust and governance has been explored, but the implications for HRM and organizational cultures and structures have not yet been fully addressed.  Some tools for exploring this area have been introduced to the project[13].

Knowledge management has featured in several areas of study and in new proposals spawned by the questions that NECTISE has uncovered.  New developments include a computational model for knowledge reuse to provide intelligent decision support to distributed decision makers across a decision network in a NEC context[14]. The model defines five key elements (decision makers' roles, knowledge types, knowledge sources, knowledge environments, and means of knowledge integration); it established the foundation of a knowledge-based tutoring and learning system that will be integrated into the VIP-DS to provide intelligent and proactive decision support.

Back to top